Critique on the 1983 historical marker installed by the National Historical Institute at the Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral, Maasin City, Southern Leyte, Philippines
Leslie Anne L. Liwanag
Guiraldo C. Fernandez Jr.
F.P.A. Demeterio III
Abstract
In 1983, the National Historical Institute of the Republic of the Philippines placed a historical marker on the front left side of the Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral, a two-hundred-year-old structure located in Maasin City, Southern Leyte, Philippines. This Cathedral is the seat of the now half-a-century-old Diocese of Maasin. While pursuing a larger research project, entitled “Cataloguing and baselining the seven Filipino–Spanish churches of the Diocese of Maasin,” which was funded by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts of the Republic of the Philippines, the research team was able to uncover glaring errors in such a historical marker. This paper addresses these errors, explains their possible causes/sources, and proposes a more historically accurate text that can be used to revise this important historical marker.
